I am new to nodejs programming and going through various js that are being developed for node. My question is a basic one. Can someone please explain me the difference between express and socketio.
From what I know, express is a middleware on which we can use template engines like jade to push data to browser. What does socketio do then? Is it a transport layer? It is confusing to me to understand the difference and why we need express and socket in nodejs apps.
Express is an application server. You define routes and write code to generate your application's pages or API responses. It is basically a port of a ruby project called Sinatra. It works for a traditional request/response HTTP model.
Socket.io is there to help you implement a server push model for real time type features such as alerts/notifications, chat, or whatever updates you want to do if you want them to just show up in the browser without waiting for the user to click a "refresh" button or anything like that.